When people say that the only certain thing in life is death, sometimes I think that they are forgetting about failure. Everybody fails at something: whether it is a test, getting into a school, or even arriving to class on time. Think about it. Failure is inevitable; but this does not mean that failure is an awful thing. It is a fact of life, and the fact is this: we need failure in our lives.

Believe me, don’t believe me; I’m only sharing how I found out that failure is a good thing to have in life. And this isn’t me saying that, "failure is super awesome, I love failing, I fail at something at least once a day"; this is me saying that failure is terrible, but it’s the good kind of terrible that makes you stronger. When you look back at your life, you’ll remember the good times and the bad times, and failure can make both of these categories. I adore failure because we don’t want it, it’s there and we thrive from it.

I never thought that failure could be good. However, there came a day in my “Christian Lifestyles” class in high school when we were asked to put on a skit for the school for Thanksgiving to give thanks for our blessings. My teacher asked everyone to write down ten things they were thankful for, and to share one with the class. We got responses like "a house," "a car", "friends," "family," "pets," – all of the generic yet awesome things to be thankful for in life and reasons to go with them. I said that I was thankful for my health because having diabetes is rough sometimes, and I thought I was super awesome and different because no one else said that they were thankful for their health. But there was this one response from my friend that no one was expecting. When the rotation turned to her, she said, “I am thankful for my failure because it has taught me so much and made me who I am today.”

Never once had I ever heard someone be thankful for their failure. Who is happy with their failure or thankful that it happened?

Then it dawned on me — I was.

This discussion occurred during my senior year of high school, and ever since then, I think about every time that I have failed and how I am a better person now because of it.

I begin with the small things, like being late to a meeting. Next time I’ll leave earlier. Now I know how to better manage my time. Then I think about a test on which I didn’t perform well – now I know how to study for it. Moving onto the important things, I think of how I didn’t make it into that one dance intensive for the summer, and how I felt that I had failed. Devastated, I wallowed in self-pity for a while and vowed to do better, to be better. Now the more I think about it, I am glad I failed because it forced me to work on my weaknesses in dance, then working on these weaknesses taught me that I didn’t actually want to dance for the rest of my life. I thought about my scores on standardized tests that did not get me into Harvard or Columbia. I focused so much on this “failure” that I saw myself only as the score I was on that test. I forgot all about the other amazing accomplishments I made. Focusing on my other accomplishments thanks to my failure helped me make the decision to attend Heidelberg University, Now I attend an amazing university that is not an ivy league and I am treated not like a number on a test, but as a human being who came to learn. On my failed friendships, I have learned from them that I am a human and deserve to be treated with the respect that I deserve. Now I have such friends who make me laugh and smile every single day and show me what it’s like to be in love with life.

If I had never experienced these failures in my personal life, I would have never grown as a person. In the moment, failure is frustrating and it rips you open. Your heart feels like it’s being weighed down by a thousand bricks and brutally ripped apart in the center by the bear from "The Revenant" But I adore failure. I am thankful for failure because I have not let it rule my life, but I have allowed myself to learn from it, to change my life based on my own mistakes.

Once upon a time I was terrified to fail. Now I welcome it. I love learning about myself in all of these new ways, and if you don’t believe me or trust me, that’s fine. But I believe that if you take a step back and analyze everything that you have ever failed at, you will find a shift in your behavior and see how strong and brave you are because of it.

So, to failure, my old and constant friend, I adore you.